


The Long Haul

by moonix



Category: Havemercy Series - Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett
Genre: BAMF dragon ladies, Everyone Is Gay, Hogwarts AU, M/M, Nat and Cassie are in lesbians, Raphael is a poetic disaster, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-15
Updated: 2015-08-15
Packaged: 2018-04-14 21:28:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4580769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ivory hasn't been able to attend Hogwarts on account of, you know, turning into a savage beast every month on the full moon, but it's fine, really - he's got chocolate frogs, and his brothers who are looking out for him. Except then he's allowed to go and join the sixth years to complete his education after all, and suddenly he has friends (???), and a Raphael, and more cats than he needs. Featuring Patronuses, meddling siblings, guest appearances by assorted airmen and other cuties, dragons turned human, some wandless magic and awkward first times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Long Haul

**Author's Note:**

> I generally have at least two sorting headcanons for every character, so if you have different ideas, I probably agree with those as well, but went with what worked best for this story here.
> 
> Trigger warnings: just a brief mention of past self-harm, but nothing graphic. If there is anything else you think should be mentioned here, please let me know.
> 
> The characters involved in sexy times are 17, i.e. of age in the wizarding world, but if you have a problem with that, consider yourself warned. :)
> 
> This story features some of Janie and my original monsters on the side (a.k.a. Maxwell and Sebastian, Ivory's troll brothers) and we sincerely hope they don't offend anyone too much! We are very protective of our precious babies, so be gentle pls. All the surnames you don't recognise are made up!
> 
> Thank you to Janie for bearing with me every time I start frothing at the mouth over dumb Hogwarts AUs!!

Ivory is sixteen when he finally gets to attend Hogwarts.

It's all he's ever wanted, besides an unlimited supply of chocolate frogs and a miraculous cure for lycanthropy; the number one subject requested for bedtime stories from his brother Maxwell and the thing he bonds over with his other brother Sebastian the most, leaning over ancient maps of the castle on the kitchen table and tracing faded spellwork, spinning theories amid the gentle steam of teapots and the creaking of their spines as Maxwell clucks over his _Prophet_.

Ivory isn't sure how to feel about it now that it's happening, but he tries to remember all the late-night conversations and the squiggly drawings of the Forbidden Forest layout on crumpled napkins as he steps through the barrier onto the platform and the beehive of noise, smoke and bodies swallows him up, and Maxwell lets go of his hand.

*

He sits by himself on the train, nestled up against the window with someone's cat in his lap and his Ravenclaw scarf wound tight around his neck. At least he won't have to suffer the indignity of getting Sorted with the First years, but he's already overwhelmed by all the people in the compartment around him. He doesn't even know where the cat came from, really, or whether he's even supposed to let it sleep here.

Small animals make him nervous.

It's September the first, already autumnal. He's woken up to the bruised, burnished glow of copper-green sunlight, the smell of rain and warm blackberry jam, toast crumbs in the kitchen, a pot of roasted green tea. Full moon not far off. He can already taste it on his tongue, like the metallic hint of blood after biting your lip.

He desperately, achingly, wants to make friends.

*

Professor Margrave introduces him to the Ravenclaws in his year before the start-of-term feast. There are too many smiling girls, but only three Ravenclaw boys, a nervous one, a grumpy one, and one with messy hair and starlight eyes who gasps and spills his pumpkin juice when he sees Ivory, which makes him flinch in fear for a moment, but the Professor's hand tightens reassuringly on his shoulder.

“Everyone, this is Mr Ivory Black,” Professor Margrave says. “He has been unable to attend Hogwarts due to medical reasons and we're very pleased to have him here now for his last two years. I expect you all to help him settle in at Ravenclaw.”

Ivory sits next to the nervous one, fully intending to make awkward small-talk, but he gets dragged away by a red-haired girl from Gryffindor before he can even fully pronounce his name ( _Tov_ -) , and then Ivory sits alone until the messy-haired boy extracts himself from the two girls at his sides and takes the empty seat.

“Hi,” he whispers, offering a hand. It's warm and twitchy when Ivory shakes it. “I'm Raphael. Nice to meet you, I mean, nice to meet you.”

Ivory blinks. He still has trouble reading, but he's never had words shimmer out of place in his mind like this before, unless the boy really did say the same thing twice.

“Is that Black as in, The Most Ancient And Noble House Of Black?” Raphael asks before Ivory has a chance to reply anything. The capital letters are audible.

“Don't be stupid, Raphael,” one of the girls says. “There isn't anyone left from that family who still bears the name.”

“It was my mother's,” Ivory whispers, and Raphael looks at him with that unnerving night-sky gaze even though Ivory is pretty sure he hasn't managed to turn the words into actual sounds. “She's a Muggle pianist."

“Cool,” Raphael says, and gets distracted by the food.

*

Slowly, Ivory begins to settle in.

He writes to Sebastian about the winding stairs of the Owlery and the architecture of the Great Hall, actually managing to pluck one of the floating candles out of the air to examine the various enchantments – permanent floating charms, charms that stop the wax from dripping onto the tables below, a beautiful series of runes along the base that breathe life into the wick whenever needed. He writes to Maxwell about the tea which tastes like brittle autumn leaves and burnt toffee, about Astronomy up on the highest tower, and about the beautiful girl, Cassiopeia, who gave him a spare quill in Transfiguration when his broke.

His dorm mates are helpful enough, but easily distracted by books and rarely around – nervous Toverre holes himself up in the library as soon as lunchtime on the first day of lessons, grumpy Thom apparently has a boyfriend that he spends all his time with, and messy Raphael hides behind Cassiopeia and Natalia whenever he walks past, but doesn't seem hostile, which rules out the possibility of him having somehow found out about his condition.

The first full moon is bad, so bad that Ivory has to spend three days in the hospital wing, and Maxwell and Sebastian send a total of seven howlers to the Ministry between them because they nearly let Ivory bleed to death on the floor of his holding cell after the transformation. He's only spent one other full moon night there, and both times have been so much worse than all the ones at home, where his brothers take turns coming up with new ideas for the spare room – forest clearings and sand dunes and mossy rocks, and once, an igloo, Ivory's personal favourite – but Ivory can't tell them that, even though they probably already know. If they take him out of Hogwarts now, he's never going back, and he hasn't even made it a whole month yet.

Still, though. He is a little lonely – no, he would be, if it weren't for his brothers' letters (Maxwell's long and looping, Sebastian's curt and precise), or the steady, curious company of other people's cats winding about his legs when he goes for a walk along the lake's edge, or the constant, sleepy rumble of the wolf's presence on the outskirts of his mind.

And then, one day, he becomes aware of another presence, and turns sharply to catch Raphael's shadow skittering away around a corner.

*

“Stop following me.”

Raphael freezes and looks up from the whole week's worth of homework he has spread out across his table in the library. _Why_ doesn't he just do it in the evenings? Ivory is baffled as to how he manages to turn anything in on time, but then, he is a slow reader, and Raphael isn't.

“I'm not following you,” Raphael says, the words jilted by a breathy little laugh – a fake one, if Ivory isn't mistaken.

Ivory's fingers clench around his books. The lamps on the tables have been replaced with flickering pumpkins that someone's charmed to pull faces at the occupants. Raphael's looks amused.

“I saw you, in the dungeons,” Ivory whispers furiously. The pumpkin's leery face arranges itself into an _uh-oh_ expression with a sly twist of delight on the edge, as if it's holding its breath for the grand finale. “Stop following me.”

“What were you doing in the dungeons, anyway?” Raphael asks softly, his eyes large and round like Silver Sickles.

“I got lost,” Ivory snaps, feeling the woollen scratch of irritation in his chest, and stomps out of the library, winding through the orange glow of several jeering pumpkins and nearly forgetting to return his books at the front desk.

* 

Raphael doesn't stop following him, but he does stop trying to be sneaky about it.

All of a sudden, he's just there, sitting beside him at the breakfast table and passing the blackberry jam even though Ivory's never told him that it's his favourite, walking him to class (even Arithmancy, which Raphael doesn't attend) and keeping up an endless stream of inane chatter, slouching in an armchair beside his in the common room at night while Ivory's trying to do homework and reading bits of poetry out loud that all seem to have something to do with fair hair, eternal love or secrets.

He's there in Herbology, a streak of mud on his nose and a peppermint smile melting on his mouth, helping Ivory with the Knotgrass and getting tangled up to his elbows in it. He's there in Defence, showing him the correct wand movement and murmuring encouragements as Ivory casts his first Patronus – a cat, what is it with cats and him lately, why do they even like him – and then fails utterly at producing even a single wisp himself, laughing at his own clumsiness. He trails after him on the first Hogsmeade weekend and buys him chocolate frogs, before his siblings call him away and he blushes beetroot red and shuffles off with a mumbled apology.

“I'm glad we're friends now,” Raphael tells him one stormy night, flinging himself down on the sofa where Ivory is trying to decipher a chapter on antidotes and pressing the soles of his feet carefully against Ivory's thighs.

“We're not friends,” Ivory snaps. He is restless, exhausted by the pull of the approaching full moon and the itchy onset of arousal that precedes it, but he doesn't feel any kind of satisfaction when Raphael's face falls for a moment.

“Anyway,” Raphael says, putting his feet back where Ivory's shoved them off twice already. “Are you done with your moonstone essay?”

Another flick of anxiety in his belly. Ivory curls his hands around the edges of his book and breathes out, slowly and deliberately.

“Yes,” he finally says.

“Can I copy?”

“No. I already handed it in.”

Raphael makes a disappointed noise in the back of his throat. He still has soot on his cheek from where he made a box of matches explode in Transfiguration. The wolf twitches deep inside Ivory's brain, and he has to rub his temples to smooth the resulting stab of pain away.

“Can I keep you company for a bit,” Raphael whispers, and he looks so sad and hopeful, and Ivory's seen his friends laugh at the explosion earlier, not unkindly, but not particularly bothered, either. He huffs, irritated, and doesn't kick Raphael's feet away again.

He becomes reabsorbed in his book, Raphael's for once quiet presence fading into the background, and when he finally comes round again, his head pounding and his fingers picking at the loose threads on Raphael's trouser legs, Raphael is asleep with one hand curved over his belly and the other one trailing on the floor, glasses askew, hair tangled and soft. The fire in the grate has burned down almost completely, but there's a gentle ball of light floating over Ivory's head, illuminating his page, and Ivory doesn't know where it came from.

It pops like a balloon when Raphael startles awake with a snuffling grunt.

*

Ivory suffers through another full moon, coming out on the other side with a broken ankle that's still tender even after they mend it, and a new scar over his ribcage, silvery and mocking. The nurse lets him go after breakfast, for which Ivory is grateful, because it means he doesn't miss any of his classes, even if he's still reeling from the transformation. Reading is so much more of a problem shortly after the moon, and he eats half of a shepherd's pie for lunch because he's starving, while Raphael watches with his mouth open and his own food forgotten on his fork.

There is dessert, and Ivory spends ten minutes wistfully eyeing up the trifles that normally make him sick, until Raphael slides one over to him with his scarf half tugged over a silent smirk.

“Someone's hungry today,” Thom remarks drily, one eyebrow pushed up into his hairline. His boyfriend is sitting with them today, Balfour Vallet, and he's got the same expression on his face when he looks up and adds “you weren't in your bed last night”.

Next to him, Raphael chokes on a mouthful of tea and nearly falls off his chair. Ivory shoves a dripping spoonful of trifle in his mouth and doesn't answer, and then lunch is over and they all troop down to Herbology in the paintbrush bristle of late October rain, and the subject gets dropped.

*

They have Astronomy the night before Halloween, and Ivory looks up at the stars with a tug of foreboding between his shoulderblades, like wings trying to break through the skin. After a lengthy six a.m. discussion with Maxwell back in August, he decided not to take Divination, despite his rather unsettling talent with tea leaves, tarot cards and pendulums – he's only ever glanced into a crystal ball once and swore to himself never to do it again. The stars are different, though. He can't escape their shivery gaze, no matter how much he avoids Firenze in the corridors, and tonight the pale light of the waning moon makes his eyes ache, and he writes _???_ in miniature print in the left-hand corner of his star chart like an anchor.

The next day starts slow, with tea that is starting to taste like chimney smoke and wet earth now that the weather is getting colder, and a bowl of porridge that nearly takes up the whole table. Raphael drizzles honey over his portion, making a lopsided star shape, and then smothers it in spiced pumpkin puree while the wind howls high above in the rafters and students start to trickle out for their morning classes. The Sixth years have a while yet to shake off the beating bat's wings of sleep and finish one more drowsy cup of tea before their pre-lunch Defence lesson.

Professor Adamo is testing them on the Patronus charm today. Ivory's cat makes a loping, stalking circle around the room, then rubs its insubstantial head up against Ivory's calf and disappears when Adamo gives an approving nod and writes something down. He walks back to the row of tables pushed against the far wall and sits between Cassiopeia and Toverre to watch his classmates perform, getting lost in the soothing white glow of the different Patronuses for a while. Thom causes quite the stir when his dragon bursts into the classroom, metallic glint of swirling scales and cold fire in its eyes, and Thom himself nearly has a panic attack until Hal leads him out of the room with a soothing hand on his back.

They have Defence with the Hufflepuffs, and Ivory recognises some of them by now. Hal, because he is always everywhere, smiling and helping, and his Patronus is a tiny ball of fur with minuscule ears and a twitching rabbit nose that makes all the girls squeal in delight. Ghislain, because he is tall and strong and unbearably kind, while his Patronus is a quick, mischievous gleam of fish scales in the cold air of the classroom, gone with one graceful stroke of silver fin. His friend Magoughin, whose first name Ivory doesn't know, and whose parrot Patronus shimmers with an almost-hint of rainbow colours when it lands on his shoulder to cheers and applause.

And then it's Raphael's turn, who still hasn't managed to produce one in class, and Ivory finds himself holding his breath as Raphael shuffles forward, a nervous fever flush smeared over his face like splotchy pink paint.

“What do you think it's going to be?” someone whispers. “A unicorn, maybe?”

“Nah, more like a lovesick narwhal.”

The pitter-patter of badly stifled laughter follows Raphael all the way to the front of the room. Cassiopeia and Natalia both give him a thumbs-up, and his lips twist into a bitter green tea shape, sheepish and grim, before he lifts his wand and opens his mouth to say the spell. His eyes meet Ivory's gaze, and suddenly his face clears, like silver linings on clouds, and he gives his wand a little twitch and whispers “Expecto Patronum” like a wish and a secret and a curse, and a resplendent creature made of wispy white takes shape in the air.

Someone gasps.

“That's an Arctic wolf,” Toverre whispers, pushing up his glasses to get a better look. The creature just stands there, coiled like wire on long, skinny legs, eyeing up the audience. Raphael has dropped his wand, but it's still there, calm and poised; the mirror image of Ivory's soul.

Ivory wants to cry.

He wants to step up to it, reach out and touch it, reassure himself that it's real and beautiful and benign, but then he blinks and it flicks out of existence like a candle flame, leaving behind only curls of smoke and a hazy imprint on the inside of his eyelids.

“That was beautiful, Raphael,” Cassiopeia murmurs into the silence, and Raphael turns around to rub shaky fingers over his eyes, smudging his glasses in the process, while Professor Adamo scribbles a passing grade in his book and the usual chatter starts up around them again.

Ivory feels the stellar pressure between his shoulderblades lift, star-prick by star-prick, and uselessly tries to blink the impression of the wolf out of his retinas.

*

He tries to avoid Raphael for a while.

It's an almost impossible task, because Raphael keeps trailing him like a winter wind, and the slick November frost and rain turn the path along the lake into a treacherous slope, so Ivory has to restrict his walks to the castle for the most part. He makes the mistake of mentioning Raphael's Patronus in one of his letters to Maxwell, who writes back with sprawling amusement and a cramped little post scriptum by Sebastian that only says _who is this mystery boyfriend then_. Dismayed, Ivory attempts to send a reply and set things to right, but after three crumpled up pieces of parchment, he gives up.

Things start to go wrong by the third full moon.

Ivory wakes up to the familiar chicken-scratch of restless legs, crawling skin and aching bones, mixed with the throb of arousal that's worse now that he isn't as preoccupied with the new routine anymore as he was the first two times. It doesn't help that he hasn't masturbated since August, because he has yet to find a place that is both appropriate and private enough. Sure, the dormitory is empty most of the time, but the mere possibility that anyone could walk in at any given moment, curtains and silencing charms aside, send Ivory skittering out of bed with the hair on the back of his neck standing up.

“Are you okay?”

Raphael awkwardly slides into the armchair next to him and leans over to peer at him over the top of his glasses. Ivory's been sitting here for almost two hours, muscles locked tight and quivering, staring into the fireplace. Raphael strokes his arm with the back of his hand and Ivory closes his eyes at the milky swirl of desire in his belly.

“Do you want to go to the hospital wing?” Raphael asks quietly. Ivory shakes his head no and looks up as Professor Margrave sticks his head into the common room, nodding at him.

“I have to go,” he tells Raphael, who half-rises out of his chair after him.

“But it'll be curfew soon,” Raphael splutters. “Where are you going?”

“None of your business,” Ivory says, and walks out. He has a coat and his wand, both of which he's going to have to hand in at the Ministry along with his clothes before entering the holding cell. He hates being naked in front of them, hates being naked in a naked room, and his half-yearly medical check-up is approaching as well, a pointless and invasive procedure that makes him want to tear the nurses' throats out with his bare fingers.

He forgets about Raphael on the long walk to the Floo, doesn't think about anything at all as Professor Margrave makes him drink the last dose of Wolfsbane - “it's not as potent as it should be,” he'd explained apologetically the first time Ivory took it, because Professor Margrave brews it himself, and the ingredients are expensive and hard to come by, but it's done him a world of good and Ivory's going to miss it when he leaves school. The wolf is still unhappy, and the transformations are still painful, but the potion makes him sleepy instead of restless and takes the edge off the urge to bite and scratch that's always there at the back of his throat despite Maxwell's and Sebastian's best efforts to keep him entertained.

Ivory lets his mind remain blank throughout the check-in procedure at the Ministry, until they close the heavy iron door behind him and leave him in the dark. Shivering, he curls up in his usual corner, his hackles rising at the smell of other wolves that have inhabited this cell before, and then the rushing green river of his thoughts pools into a fragrant pot-pourri of Raphael all on its own – Raphael's eyes, his scent, his voice. It soothes him, so he keeps thinking about that, until the first bone splinters under the invisible ministrations of the moonlight, and his head slams hard against the wall.

*

He wakes up in the hospital wing.

It's warm and the lights are on, even though it's daylight outside, the silence rippling from time to time under the impact of small pebble sounds: a smattering of raindrops against the window, someone clearing their throat, a _flap_ of parchment, the tapping of a quill. The curtains are drawn around Ivory's bed, but it's reassuring to hear that he's not alone.

He coughs, adding to the chorus, and sits up laboriously to reach for the glass of water on his bedside table. There are fresh bandages around his arms, and he inhales the smell of gauze and iodine, thyme and clean linen that lingers over the place.

He hears the rustle of fabric and the padding of bare feet on the stone floor, and then someone is standing outside his curtains, breathing nervously.

“Ivory?”

The whisper trickles down his spine like a shiver, and Ivory sinks back against the pillows, trembling and weak.

“Raphael, what are you doing here?” he says, the words glazed over with pain and sleepiness rather than sharp and angry as he'd meant them to be. There is a shuffling noise, and Raphael twitches open the curtains, peering inside with only one eye visible.

“I, um,” he says, “I followed you.”

He pushes himself further inside the cocoon of Ivory's bed, the curtains swishing shut behind him, and perches on the edge of the mattress with a petulant scowl.

“Did you go to St. Mungo's? Is it your mystery medical condition again? You look worse now than you did when you left,” he mutters, pressing the pads of his thumbs into the spaces between Ivory's fingers on top of the sheets. He looks frazzled and tired, his hair sticking up in the back and pillow creases on his left cheek, and his glasses are lopsided again, like he fell asleep without taking them off first. Even so, Ivory feels self-conscious under Raphael's gaze, with his shaking hands and his blood-stained bandages and his loud, rasping breath.

“How did you get in,” Ivory manages to ask, because the hospital wing is locked at night, and it's still early in the morning judging by the slant of the light.

Raphael colours.

“Took some fever fudge,” he murmurs. “Glendarrow just did his long-suffering face, gave me some Pepper-Up and told me to sleep it off. I brought a book, though.” 

He holds it up. It's a Muggle book, old and worn; well-loved. Ivory can't read the title or the author, but assumes it's poetry. He coughs again, and Raphael hands him the glass of water.

“Should I tell him you're awake? Is there anything you need?”

“No,” Ivory says, and “thank you,” because it's nice to have someone look after him when his brothers aren't there. Raphael blushes furiously, and Ivory notices that a corner of his sheet furls into a tight pink rosebud and falls apart again, fading from petal pink back to white linen all in the space of a few seconds.

“What was that,” he asks, scratchily, and Raphael ducks his head.

“Ahh, that,” he says, clearing his throat. “'s what happens, sometimes, when I'm...”

He stops himself, fiddling with the cuffs of his sleeves, and Ivory stares at the place where the rose bud appeared.

“It's nice,” he finally whispers, and this time a bright yellow brimstone butterfly flits out of the closed book in Raphael's lap. It zooms around the small enclosed space before winking out of existence again.

Ivory smiles, and Raphael smiles back, wobbly and hesitant.

*

“I'm just going to keep asking until you tell me,” Raphael says, with his chair pushed close to Ivory's and his arms around his drawn-up knees. They're in the library, because Ivory needs to catch up on homework – so does Raphael, actually, because he's spent every free minute of the last two days by Ivory's bedside in the hospital wing, reading him sonnets and sneaking food in from the kitchens, telling him funny stories about his family until Ivory had a stitch in his side from laughing; but all Raphael's done so far is draw squiggly lines on his parchment and watch Ivory work.

Ivory sighs, and pulls his book closer to him. The letters still swim in front of his eyes, making no sense, and another headache blooms like algae behind his temples.

“Is it something embarrassing?” Raphael prods, kicking his feet now and tickling Ivory with the end of his quill until he swats him away.

Ivory doesn't dignify that with a response.

_Is_ it something embarrassing? He's never thought of it that way. The Ministry procedures are humiliating, yes, and some aspects of the disease, he supposes, could be termed embarrassing, if Maxwell and Sebastian weren't supremely gifted at nipping any potential awkwardness in the bud that Ivory might've felt about wetting the bed when he's passed out from the pain or throwing up all over the kitchen table after a particularly nasty transformation. The only thing they don't know about is the strange flare of arousal in the lead-up to the full moon, and Ivory intends to never tell anyone about that ever, so there is that.

“Hm,” Raphael makes, pursing his lips. “It's okay if it is, I do embarrassing things all the time, you can tell _me_.”

“I'm not going to tell you,” is all Ivory says, firm and flat. He gives up on his Transfiguration essay and instead starts fleshing out his star chart, because drawing and labelling is less exhausting than reading and making coherent sentences.

“Not _yet_ ,” Raphael corrects.

Ghislain and Magoughin walk past with identical smirks on their faces, ruffling Raphael's hair with their big hands and snickering when he flails at them.

“Nice of you to help your boyfriend with homework, Raphster,” Ghislain chuckles, and Ivory says “he's not my boyfriend” absent-mindedly, but he might as well be talking to himself for all anyone takes notice.

“Don't be mean, Ghislain,” Magoughin chides. “He might write about you in his diary.”

“I don't keep a diary!” Raphael squawks indignantly, then claps a hand over his mouth when the librarian gives him a stern look.

“Oh, so it was _someone else's_ diary Luvander stole out of your bag last month, someone whose name was, coincidentally, also Raphael Marlowe, someone who, coincidentally, was also hopelessly in love with -”

“Mags,” Ghislain says, wheezing with silent laughter. “Mags, I don't think he's realised.”

Magoughin makes an _oops, my bad_ face, holds up his hands and tip-toes away to the Herbology section. Rumour has it he grows his own hallucinogens in greenhouse nine, but Ivory can't imagine how he does it without Professor Temur noticing. Ghislain follows with another ruffle through Raphael's outraged hair.

“Did they really steal your diary?” Ivory asks, frowning, when they've gone. “That's not very nice.”

“Uh, no,” Raphael mutters indistinctly at the tabletop. “ _Luvander's_ not very nice.”

“Last week he told me I was uptight,” Ivory confesses. He didn't mean to tell anyone, but the words just spill out now, fluttering helplessly in the crisp, clean air of the library. His fingers are itching for a cup of tea to curl around.

“He said that I needed to untwist and that he could help me with that if I knew what he meant. What _did_ he mean?”

He turns to Raphael, chewing nervously on the end of his quill, because he's never quite managed to curb the habit of biting things for stress relief, no thanks to the wolf. Raphael stares at him with his mouth open again, and then a hazy pink blush weaves over his cheeks, and the table begins to smoke, and Ivory is too busy putting out the fire - “ _It wasn't a fire_ ,” Raphael insists later, “it was just smouldering a _teensy tiny bit_ ” - to press for an answer.

Raphael is still murmuring something that sounds like “ _untwist_ ” when they get kicked out of the library, and Ivory doesn't ask again, in case something else will go up in flames.

*

Cassiopeia and Natalia come trailing in Raphael's wake some time at the beginning of December. Cassiopeia's hung out with Ivory before – they've been tentatively bonding over Astronomy, architecture and chocolate frogs, and she's lent him her scarf when Raphael borrowed Ivory's after misplacing his own. (“ _Misplaced_ ,” Cassiopeia snorts, but doesn't tell him why it's so funny.)

The girls are easy-going and friendly, and Ivory wonders if this is what having sisters feels like. At night, they wind around his space on the sofa like cats, smelling of apples and quinces and damp coats, and Natalia finishes Raphael's sentences with two fingers stuck in a book and the other hand in Cassie's hair. Ivory still tries to withdraw his various limbs from where Raphael's propped up against them, but increasingly forgets, until one day Raphael falls asleep with his head in Ivory's lap and one of his hands tucked under his knee, and Thom walks past with that perpetually raised eyebrow and his sharp candy cane smirk and Ivory ducks his head, feeling awkward.

There is one more full moon to weather before the Christmas holidays, and Ivory is torn between relief that he has friends to help him through it now and concern that his monthly absences might soon be connected to his disease if they stick around.

“I have another treatment coming up,” he finally confesses, one night when he and Raphael are alone in the dormitory because Toverre is pulling an all-nighter in the library and Thom is _somewhere_ with Balfour. It's not _entirely_ a lie – he's got the Ministry examination as well this time, and the thought of that, at least, is enough to curb the arousal up front – but Raphael looks immediately suspicious.

“You know, if it makes you worse, it's not a very good treatment, is it? Are you _sure_ that it helps?” he says, squinting through the smudged lenses of his glasses at Ivory and opening another chocolate frog wrapper. The frog jumps out before he can grab it, though, and Ivory snatches it out of the air in a brief flash of surprised reflexes that bowls him over backwards. He lands against the pillows with a soft _oomph_ and holds the squirming chocolate frog aloft in one hand.

“Nice,” Raphael giggles, and nearly falls off the bed himself.

He's wearing faded stripey pyjama bottoms, a Weird Sisters t-shirt that looks like it might've belonged to Ghislain at some point, and a cardigan with elbow patches that Ivory's pretty sure he's seen both Natalia and Cassiopeia wear around the common room on different occasions. The dormitory is decorated with floating silver fairy light constellations that Raphael's accidental magic has conjured up some time last week, and they haven't gone away since. It's only a few days until the full moon, and Ivory can smell Raphael from the other end of the bed – parchment and black tea and clean clothes with the barest hint of sweat and _boy_. It's distracting, to say the least.

“Do you want someone to come with you?” Raphael asks, eyes flicking up shyly from his book as Ivory finishes his letter to Sebastian. “Maybe I can get permission from Margrave...”

“No,” Ivory says hastily, “no, don't, please.”

Raphael falls back into his slouch with an unhappy sigh. One of his bare feet is nestled up against Ivory's side.

“Will you have to go at night again?”

Ivory nods, though he feels like he's revealing too much already, because he can't think of any disease, Muggle or magical, where you can only get treatment at night.

“And they'll take you to the hospital wing after?”

Again, a nod. Raphael draws swirling shapes onto the cover of his book with his fingers for a moment before brightening up.

“We could come visit you in the morning,” he says excitedly. “Me and the girls, I mean. We can bring you breakfast and homework and chocolate.”

Ivory's chest hurts, because he doesn't want them to come and see him, except he does; and, knowing Raphael, saying no would only result in him sneaking in again and adding to poor Mr Glendarrow's permanent headache anyway, so he says “okay” and chews on one of the chocolate frog's legs while Raphael rolls around on the bed and starts planning.

*

“Are you always this hungry after a treatment?” Raphael asks, watching incredulously as Ivory finishes his eighth piece of toast. He's also had a whole plate of scrambled eggs with cheese on top, two apples and three cups of tea with milk, because transformations burn through all his energy and water supplies and his stomach is a great big black hole on the morning after.

There's really nothing to be desired about Hogwarts breakfasts, but Ivory misses Maxwell's peanut butter pancakes and his green tea and the bunches of rosemary in the kitchen at home.

“Nat and Cassie are sleeping in, but they're coming by later – they wouldn't let me in their dorm this morning, can you believe them? Girl stuff they said. As if I don't know about _that_.”

Raphael sniffs, affronted, then gathers up the empty plates strewn about the bed and stacks them on the tray. Ivory lies back against the pillows and rubs his belly. Maxwell used to do it after a full moon when he was little, because the wolf is still keener than usual in him in the hours after the transformation, and there are things he likes that Ivory usually doesn't, like belly-rubbing, sweet tea and scratchy blankets.

“Why do you have all these injuries after your treatment, anyway?” Raphael asks petulantly and sits back down on Ivory's bed. “This whole thing's really fishy, if you ask me. I can't believe Margrave doesn't come to St Mungo's with you, he's usually really good at calling bullshit. Why do you even still go there?”

“Raphael.”

He looks up, notices that he's making the sheets unravel in his anger and shuts up.

“Sorry.”

The threads wind themselves back together, and Ivory relaxes. He doesn't want Raphael to see the other bandages, the ones that are hidden under the blankets, because he can get away with the one on his arm but the rest just look ghastly and not at all like a side-effect of a medical procedure. He kind of has to pee, but he'll just have to wait until Raphael leaves now before he gets up.

“Hey, Ivory? What are you doing for Christmas?” Raphael asks into the silence.

Before he can answer, the door to the hospital wing is pushed open by a broad shoulder in a snow-dusted wool coat, and Ivory makes a little mewling sound, because there are his brothers, tall and smiling with mud on their boots and frost in their hair like spray paint.

“Surprise,” says Maxwell.

Ivory grins.

*

They've taken the day off to come visit him, even though it's Christmas holidays soon, because they're “sentimental sods,” as Sebastian puts it, and wanted to see their little brother. Maxwell is ten years older than Ivory, Sebastian fifteen, and you wouldn't know just by looking at their smart coats that they spend most of their free time protesting and campaigning for whatever cause has caught their interest. Sebastian works as a freelance legal consult for people like Ivory and figures out how to build houses that seem to defy magiphysical laws in the lull between cases, and Maxwell writes articles and draws sharp-tongued political cartoons for the _Quibbler_. For as long as Ivory can think, they've always been there, looking out for him; their offices bracketing Ivory's bedroom, their laughter nestling into every nook and cranny of the house, chasing away the shadows.

“Holy Merlin,” Raphael whispers as Maxwell and Sebastian duck into Glendarrow's office to check in, “your brothers are _so cool_.”

Ivory flushes with pride.

“Is this your boyfriend, then?” Sebastian says when they come back, already shaking Raphael's hand, who blushes up to the roots of his hair and barely manages to stammer out his name.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Ivory says, and Sebastian snorts, but lets it drop.

“Well, Raphael, would you like to join us for tea?” Maxwell asks pleasantly. They conjure up chairs – a large squashy armchair for Maxwell and a straight-backed leather affair for Sebastian, while Raphael goes back to perching on the edge of Ivory's bed with his hands knotted in his lap – and, as if on cue, the House-Elves send up a tea tray laid out for four. Ivory protests when Maxwell forces a plate of chocolate cake on him, because he's had far too much breakfast, but finds himself eating it anyway, to a half-delighted, half-disbelieving smirk from Raphael.

“Ahh, Hogwarts,” Maxwell says, stretching out his legs. “Brilliant to be back.”

“You hated it,” Sebastian points out cheerfully.

“Aye, I did. Still, though. Can't help being nostalgic for your shitty teenage years, eh?”

“So, Raphael,” Sebastian says, making his empty teacup vanish with a flick of his fingernail and leaning forward in his chair. “Tell us about yourself.”

Somewhere to the right, a stack of brochures on how to prevent Dragon Pox lists off its shelf and onto the floor with a sound like a nervous sigh. Maxwell makes them float back to their position without even glancing at them, and Raphael clears his throat under the unnerving twin gazes of Ivory's brothers.

“W-well, I, um... I like Muggle poetry,” Raphael whispers into the silence.

“Oh really?” Sebastian says. He has a side interest in everything, Muggle or magical, and Ivory's heard him hold his own in a conversation about the mechanics of phoenix resurrection with a magizoologist and the second-greatest magical theorist of their times. “Who's your favourite poet?”

“Keats,” Raphael whimpers. The brochures are wobbling dangerously again, and Ivory lets the tips of his fingers press subtly into the inside of Raphael's wrist on top of the sheets.

“Fair enough,” Sebastian says.

“Come on, Seb, let's save the grilling for Christmas dinner,” Maxwell speaks up, still eating cake. Raphael's cup rattles in its saucer.

“Christmas dinner?”

Maxwell frowns.

“Ivy,” he says, and Ivory grimaces at the nickname, “you did invite him, didn't you? Seb's already planned the whole meal. We're doing nut loaf this year, by the way.”

Ivory takes a deep breath. His fingers are still curled softly against Raphael's wrist, and he can feel the flapping wings of his pulse there.

“Raphael, do you want to come to Christmas dinner at my house?” he asks, scowling at Maxwell, who sits back in his chair looking accomplished and humming _God Rest Ye, Merry Hippogriffs_. Raphael's hand clenches minutely in the sheets.

“I need to check with my parents first, but,” he breathes. “Yes, please.”

“That's that settled, then,” Maxwell chirps.

“So you have plenty of time to prep for the shovel talk,” Sebastian adds, dead-pan, and this time the brochures really do go tumbling off their shelf again. Maxwell clucks his tongue and waves his wand to put them back to rights, conjuring some twine this time to wrap around the stack.

“I'd advise you not to be late. Sebastian gets antsy when he burns dinner.”

“No need to bring gifts,” Sebastian adds. “Except for your boyfriend, of course.”

“He likes chocolate frogs,” Maxwell stage-whispers.

“And potted plants,” Sebastian says.

“For the last time,” Ivory grumbles, “he is not my boyfriend.”

Maxwell and Sebastian laugh, and then Mr Glendarrow appears to throw them all out, because apparently Ivory needs rest, and Raphael promises to come back later with Nat and Cassie while Maxwell and Sebastian tease Glendarrow, an old school friend of theirs, about his newly acquired mother-hen tendencies.

“I'm sorry about them,” Ivory tells Raphael with a pained glance over to where Maxwell is gleefully fishing a card with a peacock on the front out of Glendarrow's pocket.

Raphael smiles and shakes his head.

“They're brilliant,” he says, and then leans forward to place a chaste little kiss on Ivory's rapidly heating cheek. “You take care of yourself, hey? See you later.”

“See you,” Ivory mumbles, and watches him shuffle out the door.

*

On the morning before he leaves for the holidays, there is fruit cake and bacon sandwiches for breakfast, and tea that tastes almost like home. Cassiopeia catches him up in a hug and tucks something into his coat pocket (“save it for Christmas,” she whispers), and then Natalia flings herself at him as soon as Cassie lets go, and Raphael looks a little hesitant but follows suit anyway. Ivory inhales his gingery warm scent, and the wolf sighs contentedly in his sleep.

“What are you getting your boyfriend for Christmas, Ivory?” Maxwell asks him at the station, holding out his arm for Side-Along Apparition. He's left Sebastian at home with an arsenal of jam jars and fruit, and Ivory's stomach clenches with homesick longing.

“He's not my boyfriend,” Ivory says when they've appeared outside the creaky gates. They are topped with a finger's breadth of sloppy melting snow that drips onto Maxwell's hands as he pushes them open and leads Ivory up the overgrown garden path. Last year, Sebastian had a gardening phase, but they've all agreed since that they prefer it wild and untamed.

“I was thinking a book,” Ivory adds, closing the door behind him and breathing in the gentle smell of cardamom and pear compote that drifts over from the kitchen.

“Boring,” Maxwell snorts.

“He really isn't my boyfriend,” Ivory insists again, a frown shivering over his face, and Maxwell looks back over his shoulder and winks.

“But you want him to be,” he says wisely, and there's really nothing Ivory can say to that.

*

Getting a Christmas present for Raphael shouldn't be difficult. He's told Ivory about all the things he likes, from poetry and maté tea to knitted socks and Ivory's Ravenclaw scarf (“it's just so much softer than mine, _really_ ”), and yet, when Ivory trails after Sebastian through the Christmas market in Diagon Alley, he feels utterly uninspired.

He's already found a necklace for Cassie with her star constellation on a pendant, a rare blue booklet with Rilke poems for Natalia, a grow-your-own-mushrooms kit for Sebastian and a set of proofreading quills for Maxwell, but everything he picks up with Raphael in mind lands back on the pile with a morose sigh.

“How about a kiss,” Maxwell suggests unhelpfully over dinner.

“Wait,” Sebastian says, sitting up and pointing his fork at Ivory, squinting over the top of his reading glasses. “Have we done the talk yet? Does he know about kissing?”

“Funny,” Ivory says primly, picking at his salad.

“How did we raise such an uptight child,” Maxwell sighs.

“There, there,” Sebastian says and pats his hand. “He's just our half-brother, after all. Must be the father's side of the family.”

Ivory doesn't ask if their mother is going to be home for Christmas, because she almost never is.

*

Raphael stumbles out of the Floo looking slightly green in the face and immediately launches himself at Ivory for a hug.

“Ugh, I've missed you,” he mutters, lips a trickle of ice-water against Ivory's neck. “Happy Christmas.”

“Happy Christmas,” Ivory echoes, shaking too-long hair out of his eyes and pulling on the hem of his Christmas jumper, olive green with an orange and blue pattern, the only one Sebastian ever made before his knitting enthusiasm petered out over the discovery of the joys of baking. He's spent two hours cleaning the house yesterday, and Raphael looks around appreciatively, drifting off towards the nearest bookshelves where Maxwell keeps his political science mixed in with some dystopian sci-fi novels. His thumb gives Aldous Huxley and Margaret Atwood a wistful caress, and Ivory hides a smile behind his trailing sleeve.

“Have you opened Cassie's present yet?” Raphael asks when he finally tears himself away.

“No,” Ivory frowns, “she said to wait until Christmas morning.”

“Ah, yes, well. I might have, um, had a little peek. She's freakishly good at picking out presents, you know.”

“What was it?” Ivory asks, curious now for a frame of reference by which to judge his own present for Raphael.

“Um,” Raphael says, colouring hotly. “A photograph. Never mind. Am I late for dinner?”

It's half past six, thirty minutes early for dinner, actually, but Ivory doesn't mention that.

“Do you want to see my room,” he says, because he's spent the better part of yesterday evening picking through his things, clearing away any evidence of his condition and sneaking a few more books onto his shelves that he hopes won't be missed until after Raphael's left again.

Raphael makes a noise that sounds like footsteps on fresh snow and nods.

*

They make it through a five-course dinner without any accidental magic, unwanted revelations or panic attacks, and only one or two thinly veiled references to kissing from Maxwell, so Ivory chalks it up as a success. Raphael braves a conversation with Sebastian about Muggle Renaissance art, praises and eats every single dish put before him, and manages to surprise Maxwell with a story about how his dad met Luna Lovegood on one of his travels once and had tea with her in the desert. With respect to Sebastian's words, he hasn't brought any gifts, but there's a box of home-made gingerbread creatures sitting on the kitchen counter, cheerfully iced in red and green, that he and his brother made the day before.

“It's not polite to show up empty-handed,” he says, shrugging, and shoves two wrapped presents into Ivory's hands, one from him and one from Natalia.

Once they've all finished stuffing themselves with Sebastian's pumpkin beetroot cake (Raphael asks if he can have the recipe for his mother, and Sebastian looks so pleased that Maxwell and Ivory both kick him under the table), Maxwell cheerfully offers to do the dishes and Sebastian disappears for a smoke, so Ivory takes Raphael back to his room and sits on his bed while Raphael noseys about.

“You know,” Raphael says with a sideways glance, bunching himself up on the bed next to Ivory and curling his hands around his own feet. His socks are loose and have holes in them, and Ivory has the momentary, peculiar urge to wiggle his fingers into them and tickle his toes. “You could always open one present a little early.”

He reaches for the little stack on Ivory's bedside table and puts the largest one in his lap. It's wrapped clumsily in blue paper with small, moving silver stars, and there's a little card saying _From Raphael, to Ivory, xxx_.

“Okay,” Ivory says, carefully running his hand under a flap of wrapping paper to peel it away.

The present turns out to be less of a present but rather a nest of different things – a new scarf (“because I keep stealing yours”), special Christmas edition chocolate frogs in different flavours, a slim book on Muggle astronomy, the obligatory Keats poem scribbled into a card with a cheerful reindeer on the front, and even a tiny cactus inside a glass sphere (“because you like potted plants”). Ivory is still recovering from the sheer amount of gifts in the box when he finds one which is still wrapped, this time in silver, with a lopsided little bow around it.

“That's kind of the actual present,” Raphael says sheepishly. He's been nervously watching Ivory pick up and inspect every single item, making pleased, warm, rabbity noises whenever Ivory expressed his approval, and now he's leaning forward until he's pressed up against Ivory's side, radiating heat.

“You didn't have to get me so much,” Ivory whimpers, but starts unwrapping the last one anyway.

A little amulet falls out, just a flat, uneven silver disc with tiny dark indentations. It looks like a full moon, and Ivory's heart clenches.

“It's supposed to keep you safe,” Raphael mumbles, suddenly embarrassed. “Mags knows a guy who makes them, and I told him about you, and he gave me this one. I don't know. It suits you, I guess.”

“Thank you,” Ivory whispers, weighing the disc in the palm of his hand, already itching to put it on. It feels cool and friendly against his skin, heavier than it looks, and there's a brief flash of blue around the edge as it catches on the light like a blade. “It's perfect.”

Raphael glows at the compliment. He helps Ivory tie it around his neck, the rough pads of his fingers brushing over the top of his spine, sending a thrum of pleasure through the echoing chambers of his ribcage like a wolf's lazy growl. Most of the people who sell amulets and protective charms down the Nocturn end of Diagon Alley are charlatans, but Magoughin must know someone good, because Ivory can feel the enchantments snarl into life like bristling fur and rising hackles before curling possessively around him.

He lays his hand over where the amulet now rests cool and calm against his chest.

“I have something for you, too,” he finally remembers, and Raphael looks awkward as he slides the present in his hands. “It's just a book, though.”

“ _Just a book_ he says,” Raphael grumbles cheerfully, already tearing at the wrappings. Ivory's had to order it from Beauxbatons, and it looks ancient and frail, but the spine doesn't even crack when it flips open on its own accord to the touch of Raphael's fingers, and Ivory can hear Raphael's breath hitch in the back of his throat.

“That's,” he whispers, with shaking hands. “Really rare.”

“Not that rare.”

Raphael flails a bit, manages to dislodge his own glasses in the process and has to bend down to pick them up, a splotchy flush on his cheeks when he resurfaces.

“Yes, yes it is,” he says firmly, stroking the silk-bound cover of _Magic Without A Wand: A Journey Into The Past_. Ivory shrugs.

“It's not just for reading,” he reminds him then, because Raphael gets carried away where books are concerned. “Wandless magic isn't just for children, you know.”

“I,” Raphael says and licks his lips. “I don't... it's not like I can control it.”

He looks pained and sad, and his hand opens and closes in his lap like it wants to produce one of the origami flowers that were absent-mindedly folding themselves in Raphael's palms last week while Ivory and Cassiopeia played chess in the common room. Ivory feels the cold wind sting of frustration and the bonfire warmth of fondness at the little gesture.

“You will, though, if you practise. It's a rare talent, you know. Don't listen to people who don't know anything, do something with it.”

Raphael's lips twitch into a smile.

“Is that an Ivory Black motivational speech?”

“I would never,” Ivory says wryly. He still feels a tiny bit pathetic about his present compared to Raphael's box of wonders, though, and so he looks down at his lap and adds: “There's something else I wanted to give you.”

“What!” Raphael exclaims, laughing now. “Seriously, I don't even want to know how much you paid for this, so you really didn't have to -”

He cuts off then, because Ivory is leaning into his space to tuck a winter-dry kiss into the corner of his mouth, quick and chaste, with his nose pressing into Raphael's cheek and one hand curled loosely in the front of Raphael's shirt, and Ivory feels a little smug about that, until he imagines his brothers' faces if they knew and shyly pulls away.

“Sorry,” he blurts out, because that was rather rude; kissing Raphael without asking for permission first.

Raphael makes a faint whimpery sound and reels him in again with two fingers pinched in his sleeve, chapped lips opening faintly under Ivory's with a shiver of tongue and the jagged edge of Ivory's canine teeth, and Ivory can feel the steady trickle of neural excitement all the way into the marrow of his spine.

When they emerge, half an hour later, with red and glazed lips and (almost) equally wild hair, Maxwell and Sebastian look up from their sprawling positions in front of the fireplace, identical smirks on their faces like rustling newspaper on a silent morning, and Ivory doesn't quite have the guts to kiss Raphael goodbye before he steps into the Floo with his book clutched to his chest and some leftover pumpkin beetroot cake for his mum.

*

“So, about the Snidgets and the Billywigs,” Sebastian says, words crooked and amused in the threadbare wool of Raphael's absence.

“Don't,” Ivory says.

Maxwell cackles lazily and hides behind _Les Misérables._

Later: “That's not even how that goes, Sebastian,” but Sebastian only shrugs and throws a leftover knitting needle at Maxwell's head.

“The birds and the bees was hardly appropriate,” he mutters, once again immersed in the antique Muggle radio he's been fiddling with for two days now. “Eureka! Behold, Muggle rock music.”

_Last Christmas_ begins to filter drowsily out of the speakers, and Maxwell groans and drops his head on the armrest of his chair.

*

Cassie's present turns out to be another photograph in a delicate silver frame, one that shows her, Natalia, Ivory and Raphael all curled up on the sofa together; Cassie's head in Natalia's lap and her feet stretched out and propped up against Raphael's shoulder, who seems to have once again fallen asleep half-draped over Ivory, who is frowning at a book. It's such a familiar scene that Ivory has to laugh, and Maxwell snatches it out of his hands before he can even lean away.

“Well done, cub,” he says, approval humming in his voice. “You seem to have found yourself some friends.”

“Oh, don't taunt him, please,” says Sebastian, gleefully rooting through his mushroom kit. “You'll set him off again about how it's not gonna last because he's a _monster_ and no one wants to be friends with a _monster_ -”

“Shut up,” Ivory mumbles, taking the photograph back and cradling it gently in his hands. He _is_ worried about the longevity of their little quartet, because he has no illusions about getting to keep his secret forever, especially not with Raphael around – but right now, he just wants to bask in the glow of having people outside of his family who actually like to spend time with him and send him thoughtful Christmas presents.

Natalia's gift is, unsurprisingly, another book, but she is creepily observant when she wants to be, and Ivory nearly drops it in shock when he opens it and a clear, pleasant voice starts reading the first page out loud at just the right pace. There's a note attached to it that says _noticed u scowl at books a lot, thought this might help xxx_ (no question now where Raphael came up with that habit, or did she catch it from him?). He smiles and entertains himself for a bit by opening and closing the book, cutting the voice off mid-sentence, until Maxwell throws a chocolate frog at his head and insists on breakfast.

“Really?” Ivory says, raising an eyebrow at the towering stack of pancakes he sets down in front of him twenty minutes later. Twin swirls of almond and peanut butter drip down the sides, and a bowl of fresh, steaming blackberry jam sits on the table by his elbow.

“Yes, really,” Maxwell says firmly, spatula in one hand, wand in the other. His apron says _kiss the cook_ , but someone (Sebastian) has spelled the letters to change into _kill the cook_ when Maxwell isn't paying attention. “You need to keep up your strength.”

“I reconsidered,” Sebastian pipes up from his corner of the kitchen bench, already halfway through his pancakes. “I don't actually want my baby brother to have sex yet. He's too pure and innocent. It's just not right.”

“I'm of age?” Ivory points out, but as usual, nobody listens.

“Have sex? No one's talking about having sex yet,” Maxwell says. “They've only just kissed.”

“I'm seventeen,” Ivory says. “I turned seventeen last month. You sent me presents and a chocolate frog cake – that was amazing, by the way – and a big flashing card saying _Woop woop you're an adult now well done_.”

“Yes, but once you've done that, it's only a matter of time,” Sebastian says, tapping his index finger on the rim of his coffee mug. “One moment they're kissing and the next, bam, he'll ask you about deep-throating. I'm not having it, Maxxie.”

“Seventeen,” Ivory bleats, “leaving now, bye.”

He grabs his plate of pancakes and the blackberry jam, ducks under Maxwell's outstretched arm and takes his breakfast upstairs, where he puts on some music to drown out his brothers' voices and discovers that yet again one of the neighbourhood cats has managed to wriggle through his open skylight and fall asleep on his bed. He prods it gently with one toe, but it only snuffles deeper into the pillow, and Ivory shakes his head and finds a different place to sit instead.

*

“Wait,” Maxwell says over dinner. Ivory sighs, long and drawn-out, and wilts over his sweet potato curry. Maxwell points an accusing spoon at him: “You never told us what you did for your birthday.”

“Nothing,” Ivory says. “I had like ten essays to write, and I ate all of the chocolate cake before breakfast, so I was feeling a bit sick.”

“Your friends didn't throw you a party?” Sebastian asks casually, and Ivory already knows the game is up, but makes a non-committal noise anyway.

“Let me guess,” Maxwell says slowly. “You didn't tell them.”

“Ugh,” Ivory says, and grabs his plate.

*

He's actually relieved to get back to school after the holidays. Maxwell and Sebastian aren't usually quite that bad, but he figures they had some catching up to do after almost four months apart, so he hugs them goodbye anyway and blithely ignores their inappropriate facial expressions when Raphael practically pounces on him with a steady stream of _I missed you_ and _How are you, no, but, really, how are you_.

January is grey and cold, a lingering haze of icy white breath in the air where conversations are spun, and the tea at Hogwarts tastes faintly like Pepper Up and ice mice. Classes resume, homework starts piling up again like the snow on the window ledges outside, and Raphael is twitchy and nervous around him and kisses him only once, after the first time he opens his hand to a ticklish ball of Lumos with his wand across the room and the book open on his lap, in the swirl of triumph that follows.

His face falls when Ivory tells him that he has another treatment coming up at the end of the month.

“It's okay, I've got your amulet now, remember?” he says, voice wavering on the edge of cheerful, but Raphael only smiles weakly like the last flicker of candle-light at the end of the wick.

“Why won't you tell me?” he asks, sounding scared; a smear of ash in molten beeswax. “What if you get ill again and I don't know what to do?”

“I won't,” Ivory says.

“How do you know?”

“That's not how... it doesn't work like that. There's nothing you can do.”

Raphael slouches dejectedly, his hands in his pockets.

“That's what _you_ think,” he says, sullenly, and walks away.

*

“You should tell him.”

Ivory looks up, blinking against the light. He has a moment there, just a dizzy spell, spots dancing in front of his eyes like Christmas lights strung up around Nat and Cassie's heads, and he reaches out a hand to steady himself on the table until it passes. A headache snaps its jaws behind his temples, and he longs for Raphael's warm, soothing fingers rubbing figures of eight into his skull while he reads.

“Tell whom what?” Ivory croaks. Natalia rolls her eyes and starts collecting up his finished essays and charts where they're spilling down on the floor.

“We're not stupid, you know,” Cassiopeia says, then counts down on her fingers: “Monthly absences followed by at least a day spent in the hospital wing looking wrecked and miserable and eating all the things. An obscure medical condition coupled with a reluctance to tell anyone what it's even called, obsessive star-gazing, stupidly good reflexes, Margrave being all mysterious – well, okay, he is always mysterious, I'll give you that – and, of course, mood swings.”

“Either you were secretly born in a girl's body and are outrageously dramatic about getting your period, or you're a -”

“Cutie pie,” Cassie says loudly, glaring at her. Natalia has the decency to look contrite. Ivory isn't sure what's happening, because words have stopped making sense again, and they orbit around him for a long time until they finally sink in.

He feels sick.

“It's okay, baby, we've got you covered,” Natalia says, stroking his arm. “But you really should tell your boyfriend.”

“He's not my boyfriend,” Ivory whispers, before lurching off towards the nearest bathroom to throw up. The girls crowd up against the door, cooing and crooning, and when Ivory stumbles back out after a half hour cat-and-mouse game with himself about whether to face them and get it over with or become a ghost and shack up with Myrtle, they each take one side and guide him back to the dorms with all his things packed up neatly in his bag.

“We don't care if you're a -”

“Cutie pie!” Cassie yells again, even though the corridor is deserted. An empty suit of armour jumps off its pedestal in fright.

“ _Really_ , we don't,” Nat finishes desperately. “You can't help it. We've read all kinds of books and most of them are garbage, but there's some useful stuff in-between the garbage, I can copy some out for you if you want.”

“Basically, what she means is, we can help you through _that time of the month_ if you'll let us, and we're like 200% sure that Raphael's going to feel the same way about it, but you need to _tell_ him, because he's a boy and boys are stupid.”

“ _Especially_ that boy,” Natalia adds with a snort. “You should also kiss him again, _a lot_ , just saying.”

“Ugh,” Ivory says.

Cassie pats his arm and croons “I know, baby, I know.”

*

“I knew that.”

Raphael is shaking like a leaf, and he looks like he's about to cry, but he juts his chin out and clenches his hands into fists and holds Ivory's gaze.

“No, you didn't,” Natalia murmurs, rolling her eyes.

“Fine,” Raphael whines, “I didn't, but it's cool, you're cool, I don't mind, I mean I do, but not in that way, I just, I need a moment.”

“I can see that,” Natalia says with a glance at the ceiling, where miniature grey clouds are bunched up against the stone like scared animals. “You're going to make it snow if you keep that up.”

Cassie's hand kneads reassuringly into Ivory's shoulder. He has trouble swallowing all of a sudden, and his head droops until he's staring at his own shoelaces, the silence ringing in his ears. He flinches when Cassie's hand drops away from his shoulder, but then Raphael is folding him up in the most careful hug, gently tucking in his elbows and guiding his head under his chin even though he has to stand on tip-toes for that, and Ivory squeezes his eyes shut and grits his teeth against the urge to cry himself.

“Silly,” Raphael murmurs into his hair. “Should've told me earlier.”

“Ahh, young love,” Natalia sighs in the background.

*

“It says here that werewolves might be especially sensitive to touch and smell in the days leading up to the full moon,” Natalia reads out, the tip of her index finger jabbing the page. It's Sunday, and they've set up camp in the deserted Astronomy tower, scattered across an old sofa by a window in their usual formation, with Cassie's bluebell flames in glass jars around them for warmth. She has a special knack for fire magic, but if you ask Ivory, she's also very handy at making Natalia glow.

“And here,” Natalia continues, “in the twenty-four hours prior to the full moon, the werewolf may experience restlessness, irritability, migraines, nausea, dizziness, physical arousal, and a heightened sex drive, as well as increased sexual stamina. So basically, what that means is, you're super horny but take longer to get off, how is that fair?”

“Hmm,” Cassie says, a devious smirk in the corner of her mouth like the tip of a knife, glancing sideways at Natalia, who blushes and squirms.

“Any of that true for you, Ivory?” she asks quickly, and Raphael makes a strangled little noise in the back of his throat. Ivory can feel his big dark eyes on him, and stoops lower over the letter he's trying to write to Maxwell, but he keeps having to cross out words.

“Ivory?”

“Headaches,” he blurts out, accidentally ripping a hole in the parchment with his quill, “I get headaches.”

“Aww, poor baby,” Natalia croons, sliding her fingers into Ivory's pale floppy hair to trace little ringlets of pressure into his skull. Ivory sighs, crumples up the letter and throws it into one of the glass jars, where Cassie's blue flames lap it up eagerly.

“How many days till the full moon?” Cassie asks.

“Eight,” Raphael mumbles from his perch on the floor. Natalia's cat has somehow found its way up the winding staircases of the tower and is stretched out on top of the book on wandless magic that Raphael carries around everywhere with him these days. Ivory pets it absent-mindedly, and Raphael's hand slides up the sofa cushion and finds his, squeezing around his knuckles before quickly letting go again. The cat purrs.

“You don't have to do this,” Ivory tries to explain again, but Natalia starts singing the school anthem, loud and off-key, and Cassie throws him an amused look over the top of her massive Anatomy textbook.

Raphael leans over, hooks one finger in the elastic of Ivory's sock and pulls it down, then kisses his ankle where his trousers ride up, making Ivory squirm.

*

“Are you kissing him yet?” Natalia asks. “You should get on that.”

Ivory groans and buries his face in his arms.

*

It's the Friday night before the full moon. Natalia and Cassie have gone star-gazing (“ _alone_ , no boys invited”) and Thom and Balfour are down in the common room, snogging. This morning, a Hufflepuff boy with sunflower yellow hair and cornflower blue eyes came over to the Ravenclaw table to ask a hyperventilating Toverre out on a date, and Ivory is starting to feel inadequate on top of the usual mix of restless pacing, itchy skin and aching bones.

When Raphael gets back from playing Exploding Snap with Ghislain, Magoughin and Compagnon, he finds Ivory stretched out on the floor of the dormitory, trying to make candles float and dripping hot wax everywhere.

“Ah,” he says delicately, “has it started?”

“Has what started?”

“The, you know. Symptoms. What Nat found in that book?”

Ivory doesn't answer and instead concentrates on getting the candles safely back into their chandelier. He's already gone for a run along the outskirts of the Forest, and his legs are shaking with exhaustion from wading through knee-deep snow when he gets up to stalk an angry circle around the dormitory, but he still feels underused.

“Do you want to play chess?” Raphael suggests, sounding nervous.

“No.”

“We could find Nat and Cassie -”

“No.”

There is silence, hard and brittle, like frost crunching under boots. Ivory is on his third circuit of the dormitory when Raphael catches his wrist.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, then looks almost scared when Ivory stares at him. “Or, you know, we could... um... do homework...”

“Yes,” Ivory says, stepping closer.

Raphael seems on the verge of asking whether he meant the kiss or the homework, but thinks better of it as Ivory drops his gaze down to the hopeful twist of his lips.

“Yes,” he says again, and Raphael exhales, long and shaky, and closes his eyes.

*

They end up in the beanbag by the book case, clinging to each other; sighing and licking and biting, just a little bit, just enough to leave Raphael's lips bruised and swollen and his glasses askew. He takes them off after a while, balancing them on one of the overflowing shelves, and Ivory holds his face in place as he sucks his lower lip between his teeth and Raphael moans.

Ivory can feel that Raphael is hard when he shifts slightly against him, and the realisation slams into him with such shuddering intensity that he has to stop kissing him for a moment and catch his breath. Raphael doesn't do anything about it, though, and Ivory doesn't know how to ask; and so they keep kissing until the door swings open to reveal a mussed-looking Thom, for once cheerful and whistling, who stops dead when he sees them entangled on the floor.

Ivory is one per cent smug, and ninety-nine percent mortified.

“Oh. Am I interrupting something?” Thom asks, amusement curling up along his face like steam from a fresh pot of tea.

“No,” Ivory says at the same time as Raphael says “ _yes_ ”, and Thom raises both eyebrows, adjusts the strap of his bag and is about to leave when Toverre comes back with Laure in tow and the dormitory gets a lot more crowded.

“I'm going to bed,” Ivory says, and gets up to look for his toothbrush.

*

Raphael sits in the beanbag for a long time, talking to the others about whether or not the Heads of Hufflepuff and Slytherin are a lesbian couple and the likelihood of tomorrow's Hogsmeade weekend being cancelled because of the snow. Ivory doesn't bother with a silencing charm and instead lets their voices lap at him like gentle waves, drifting amid the knots and whorls of familiar words and latching onto Raphael's low, saline laughter until he falls asleep. He spends a fitful night tossing and turning in his bed, kicking off the covers, and dreams of opening up like origami paper under Raphael's hands. The next morning, he wakes up abruptly, his head swimming in pain and arousal tingling up his spine like a corset being pulled taut.

He tells the others that he's too tired for Hogsmeade, and Raphael hovers outside his curtains, but doesn't dare say anything in front of Thom and Toverre.

“I'll bring you chocolate frogs,” he promises sadly, and then the door slams shut behind them and Ivory breathes a sigh of relief.

He waits ten minutes, until the stampede of boots and chatter downstairs has died away. Checking once more that the dormitory really is empty, he lets himself fall back against the pillows and slides a hand in his pyjamas to masturbate, but, like usual, he only succeeds in getting himself close before the arousal drops away into overstimulation and he has to stop again.

After the third time, he makes an angry noise like a cat being trod upon and gives up.

He nearly jumps off the bed in fright when the door clicks open and someone comes in and kicks their shoes off noisily.

“Ivory? Are you okay?”

“Raphael?” he asks weakly, a flush strung up high in his cheeks like bunting. He yanks up his trousers and tugs the sheets up to his nose, grimacing at the smell of his own arousal which is heady and cloying in the enclosed space. “I thought you were going to Hogsmeade with Nat and Cassie?”

“I was,” Raphael says sheepishly, dropping his coat and his bag at the foot his bed. “But they were being all... girly and secretive and, well, I thought – what kind of boyfriend am I if I don't keep you company when you're poorly?”

Ivory makes a choked sound, half-agreement, half-protest. He turns onto his side, counting Raphael's footsteps on the floor.

Five, six; the curtain swishing aside; seven, the mattress dips.

“Is this okay?” Raphael asks breathlessly as he slides under the blanket and spoons up behind him, not quite touching but almost, and the wolf wants to press up against him so badly that Ivory's hands clench in the sheets. He wishes he could at least get up and wash them, but that would make it painfully obvious what he's been doing – or trying to do, anyway – and so he just murmurs vague assent into the pillow and doesn't move.

Raphael starts rubbing his shoulders in firm, soothing circles.

“You're very tense,” he murmurs.

Then he reaches over and pries Ivory's cold hands out of the sheets, rubbing rough but gentle fingers over the dry, red patches on his knuckles where he's been scratching at them and pressing his thumb into the centre of his palm, which sends another jolt of nervous arousal down through his wrist and sucks a quiet hiss in between his teeth.

“Sorry,” Raphael says, immediately letting go. “I'll, um, stop.”

He's closer now, radiating body heat. His hand trails lower to stroke Ivory's stomach, which, okay, Ivory didn't know that was – an erogenous zone or whatever, but it makes his hips twitch without his permission, and he gasps as the back of Raphael's wrist brushes his erection through his thin pyjama pants.

“Oh,” Raphael says, and again: “ _Oh_.”

Ivory buries his face in the pillow.

“So, that thing about – about being sensitive and, uh,” Raphael mumbles, his hand resting on Ivory's hipbone now. It's perfectly clear what he's talking about, but he takes a deep breath and continues anyway: “Heightened, um, sex drive?”

“Yes,” Ivory mutters, if only to stop him from saying anything else supremely embarrassing.

“Oh,” Raphael says again, swallowing audibly.

They lie curled together like claws, and Ivory can feel now that Raphael is hard as well, but trying to adjust his hips so Ivory doesn't notice. His heartbeat is a jagged, furious line down to the tips of his fingers and toes, singing behind his temples like a bowstring pulled taut.

“Can I,” Raphael says and clears his throat. “I mean, I know I'm... I'm not pretty or skinny like you or, or Luvander, or, I just, I could. I mean I _think_ I could make you feel good, if you... if you'll let me.”

He's holding his breath after that little speech, and Ivory grips his hand so hard that Raphael yelps a bit and shoves it down the front of his pants, because he's at the end of his rope, and he doesn't even know what to say to Raphael's self-deprecating offer other than that.

“Oh,” Raphael whimpers again, and then shuts up in favour of jerking him off; hesitantly at first, until Ivory starts guiding his hand, and Ivory is about to warn him that it might take some time when his orgasm takes him by surprise, shuddery and hard, like a fist clenching inside him, and longer than he's used to, making him buck his hips a few times and whine.

Raphael strokes him lightly until he's all done, balancing a delicate pattern of feather-light kisses along the top of his spine. He murmurs a small incantation and Ivory can feel the tingle of a cleaning charm prickle over their joint hands, even though he's pretty sure Raphael doesn't have his wand on him, and he's still busy being impressed when Raphael gently tucks him back into his pants and whispers “I love you” into his neck.

He stiffens, and Raphael's muscles snap along only seconds later.

“Fuck,” he whimpers, voice breaking halfway through, like cracking a tooth on something. “Fuck, I shouldn't have said that, I'm sorry, fuck.”

“Can we just,” Ivory says quietly, desperately, his own voice sounding just as wrecked. “Can we just sleep, now?”

“I'm sorry,” Raphael says again. “Yes, good idea, sleeping now, that's good.”

He shifts, about to get out of bed and pad over to his own, but Ivory holds on to him with perhaps a little more force than necessary and pulls him back.

“Stay?” he whispers.

Raphael looks at him, his hair sticking up worse than ever and his glasses smudged, half of his shirt coming out of his trousers and his eyes dark and unruly like the Forbidden Forest at night.

“Okay,” he whispers back, and stays.

*

They don't talk about what happened in Ivory's bed, but for the next few weeks, Ivory makes sure to kiss the moonlight sadness out of the open sky of Raphael's face whenever possible. Sometimes, Raphael seems on the verge of saying something, but they always get interrupted, by Natalia breezing past with a new book, Cassie looking for her Quidditch gear or Thom sporting yet another outrageous love-bite when he stumbles back in five minutes past curfew. Raphael glances at those covetously, but Ivory doesn't have the guts yet to give him one of his own.

On Valentine's day, Raphael's owl Jubilee brings Ivory a card and a box of miniature red chocolate toads with ugly heart-shaped pupils over breakfast. He eats half the box, letting them hobble around on his palm before popping them in his mouth, and then he reads the poem on the card, Neruda this time, with his mouth full of raspberry chocolate and Raphael slowly turning bright red beside him as his goblet of pumpkin juice begins to steam.

“Thank you,” Ivory whispers, giving Raphael's hand a squeeze under the table. The pumpkin juice stops short of boiling over. Raphael shoots a grumpy look at the goblet, as if disappointed in himself, so Ivory picks it up and adds a sprinkle of cinnamon before taking a sip.

“Tasty,” he says, and Raphael rubs his sleeve over his face and laughs.

“Why do you even,” he starts, but cuts himself off with his fingers clenched in his jumper, shaking a sudden shower of heart-shaped confetti out of his hair. Over at the Hufflepuff table, Ghislain and Magoughin are high-fiveing each other, and Ivory picks one of the tiny red paper hearts out of his eyebrow and bends down swiftly to pull his own wand out of his bag.

Moments later, Ghislain and Magoughin find their faces covered in lipstick, like someone's kissed them all over, and they roar with good-natured laughter at each other and high-five again for good measure. Ivory serenely packs his wand out of sight again.

“Was that,” Raphael says, another one of those abortive sentences, and Ivory smiles and goes back to buttering his toast.

*

“I hate that you have to go to that holding cell thing,” Raphael says at the end of February, when Ivory is once again recovering in the hospital wing, with a pile of leftover Valentine's treats and a steaming mug of mulled white wine on his bedside table that Glendarrow brought him with a conspiratorial wink earlier. Ivory is one of his favourite patients, because he is quiet, and he does everything Glendarrow tells him to without making a fuss. Then again, it might also help that he's friends with Maxwell and Sebastian, who call him “grumpy Al” and talk fondly about his pie-making skills.

“Can't you just go home instead? You said the transformations are better at home.”

“It was part of the deal,” Ivory reminds him again. “The Ministry wants to make absolutely sure I can't secretly sneak back into the school and cause havoc. It'd be on their heads.”

Raphael growls and kicks his legs. He's getting better at controlling his magic, but sometimes it still flickers to life in the corner of Ivory's eye – a leaf blowing away in a sudden gust of wind on a calm day, orange peel twisting into elegant shapes amid forgotten sweet wrappers and toast crumbs, tiny bursts of static and, once, a single snowflake landing on the tip of Ivory's nose even though they were inside the castle. Right now, the book on the night table begins to flap open and closed in time with Raphael's foot thumping against the leg of his chair.

“What about the holidays?”

“They don't bother outside of term,” Ivory says. “It's my family's responsibility then as long as I go home for the entire holidays.”

Raphael lets out a long, heavy breath. “Good.”

“My brothers would get arrested if I harmed someone,” Ivory says conversationally. “Once, there was a Ministry official coming to check on our security measures. Sebastian transformed the laundry room into a proper dungeon, the guy was really pleased with that. I've never actually been in there, though.”

He smiles. It's always funnier when Maxwell tells the story, but it still amuses him to imagine the poor Ministry official with his approval oozing all over the locks and chains that immediately got transfigured back into laundry lines once he left. It's exhilarating, to get away like this.

Raphael still looks pained, but the door to the hospital wing is pushed open before he can say anything, and Luvander sticks his head in.

“Mr Glendarrow!” he calls, bored. “Greylace fainted again.”

Then his eyes drop to where Raphael is holding Ivory's hand on the sheets, and glee sweeps over his features like a sunrise.

“Luvander,” Raphael wheezes, “Luvander, please...”

Glendarrow comes hurtling out of his office with a bag slung haphazardly over his shoulder and his hair in disarray.

“What's he done this time?”

“I don't know, sir,” Luvander drawls, smirking. “The usual, I suspect.”

He mouths something to Raphael behind Glendarrow's back before hurrying after him, and some of it looks suspiciously like _boyfriend_.

“Oh, no,” Raphael sighs. “Oh, _no_.”

*

Contrary to what Raphael seems to believe, Luvander doesn't actually do anything in the following days. Raphael insists that he's just biding his time - “it's _Luvander_ , the biggest gossip in the history of Hogwarts; if he knows something, the whole school knows it” - but Ivory is sure he saw Luvander wink at him when he walked past the Ravenclaw table with Niall last night, and not in a threatening way, either.

“He's just messing with you, baby,” Natalia tells Raphael, curling some of his hair around her finger. It's an early Sunday morning, and they're all coiled together merrily on Raphael's bed in their pyjamas, having been woken up by the ruckus of one of the bookshelves down in the common room actually collapsing under its weight. Ivory is the least awake of all of them, and it takes him almost an hour to realise that he's wearing Raphael's cardigan instead of his own.

“But,” Raphael whines, and Ivory has to climb into his lap and kiss him for ten minutes straight to make him shut up.

“Do you want us to leave, maybe?” Cassiopeia says, eyebrow hitched up like the hemline of a skirt.

“Any time, boys,” Natalia adds. “Just say the word.”

“Shut up.”

Raphael hugs Ivory close to him and buries his face in his neck, but Ivory can feel the sharp fingernail curve of his grin cutting lightly into the side of his throat. He tucks a cold hand under Raphael's jumper, moulding his palm around his soft hipbone, and Raphael makes a squeaky gasp and shivers against him.

“You're so cold,” he grumbles, taking Ivory's hands and attempting to rub some warmth into them. It's a futile endeavour, but Ivory lets him try anyway.

“What's this, Raphael?” Natalia says, snatching up an open envelope with jagged edges and a crumpled piece of parchment tucked inside that's been sitting on Raphael's bedside table. Raphael makes a half-hearted grab for it, but Natalia shimmies out of reach, folding herself in behind Cassie on the bed with her chin on Cassie's shoulder and holding the letter so both of them can read it.

“You told your _mum_?” she squeals delightedly a moment later.

“I _didn't_ ,” Raphael protests, “she just... assumed.”

“Told her what?” Ivory says lightly, preoccupied with the way Raphael's thigh presses into his.

“Nothing,” Raphael says quickly. “By the way, my mum's invited you all to come visit us over Easter. If, um. If you want.”

“Aw, Raph, we'd love to, really,” Natalia says, chewing on the pad of her thumb.

“But Nat and I are going to Paris together, remember?” Cassie adds. She winks at Ivory before folding the letter back into its envelope and resolutely putting it back on the bedside table, despite Natalia squawking that she hasn't finished reading yet.

“I know,” Raphael grumbles. “Traitors.”

“Hey, more alone-time with your boyfriend,” Nat stage-whispers, and Raphael coughs into Ivory's shoulder.

“D'you want to come?” he mumbles, fiddling with a loose button on the cardigan that, for some reason, Ivory is still wearing. Ivory kisses his temple when Nat and Cassie aren't looking and says “yes”, because he does want to, even if he's nervous about meeting Raphael's parents.

“Great,” Raphael breathes, grinning. “Hey, are you wearing my cardigan?”

“No,” Ivory says innocently, and bends to pick up one of the half-finished mugs of tea that have assembled in a lazy pattern on the floor.

*

“It is so very lovely to meet you at last,” Mrs Marlowe says, clasping Ivory's hand in both of hers. They are as warm as Raphael's, but drier, steadier. Ivory has trouble swallowing.

“Raphael speaks very highly of you,” Mr Marlowe adds, and Ivory shakes his hand, too, feeling like something has taken hold of his insides, squeezing out a stream of insecurities like water from a sponge. The wolf wants to run. Ivory clamps down on that urge and smiles up at Mr Marlowe.

“I'm sure he was exaggerating,” he mutters. Raphael's parents exchange a look. “Thank you for inviting me.”

“It's no trouble at all,” Mrs Marlowe says, and easily takes his elbow for Side-Along.

*

Ivory doesn't get to see much of the house beyond a first impression – cosy, crooked, cluttered; absent-mindedly welcoming – before Raphael drags him off to his room. Raphael's youngest brother Gabriel is staying at Hogwarts over the holidays, but the second-oldest, wild-haired bright-eyed Byron, who is fifteen and eternally beleaguered by girls, has come with them to catch up with his Muggle friends. He clomps up the staircase behind them, whistling cheerfully, both hands in his pockets, and leans in the door frame when they reach Raphael's room.

“God, you're so messy,” he tells Raphael, scrunching up his nose. “Poor Ivory, is there even space on the floor for a mattress? Or is he sleeping in your bed?”

He smirks, and Raphael throws a cushion at him that Byron plucks effortlessly out of the air

“Oh man, I hope you asked Glendarrow about protection,” Byron continues. “He gets all uncomfortable and starts throwing brochures around, it's priceless. I've already been to see him twice about it. I hear Caius Greylace is there every other week...”

“Don't you have homework to do or something?” Raphael growls, holding another cushion up. Byron tosses the one he's holding back at him and knocks it out of his hands, but still turns to go.

“ _Better safe than sorry!_ ” he sing-songs and disappears, leaving the door wide open and making sure to slam his own one floor down.

Raphael closes it and sighs.

“Sorry, he's a nuisance,” he says. Ivory briefly wonders if his brothers ever say that about him, but he can see that Raphael doesn't really mean it.

“It's okay,” he says – the first thing he's managed to actually get out since arriving here.

*

The first day passes quickly, with daylight skidding into dusk while Raphael and Ivory lie shoulder to shoulder on Raphael's bed and have a lazy chat about which famous witches and wizards should make it onto chocolate frog cards next. They have dinner with Byron and Raphael's parents, Moroccan tagine studded with dried apricots and raisins and steaming couscous dusted with parsley, and then tea in the living room where Ivory's fingers itch to touch the old piano in the corner. He doesn't dare ask, though, and then Raphael sets up a mattress for him to sleep on in his room, on the floor beside his bed, with Byron giggling out of sight.

It's strange, getting ready for bed in someone else's bathroom. Hogwarts is the only place Ivory has ever spent the night, aside from home, the Ministry and St. Mungo's, but this is different, because it's someone else's home; toothbrushes lined up along the sink, faded newspaper clippings on the side of a shelf and old Pygmy Puff stickers in the corner of the mirror that someone's half-scratched off. Ivory tries to find a temporary space for his things without knocking anything off the crowded surfaces. He washes his face, cleans his teeth, takes his iron supplements and his Wolfsbane and puts on his pyjamas, all of which are a size too big for him, so they cover up all of his scars even if they ride up a little during sleep.

Raphael sits upright in bed when he returns, waiting for him with his arms wrapped around his knees. His glasses sit atop a stack of books and clutter on his bedside table.

“Ready?” he says once Ivory has slipped under the covers on his mattress, and douses the light.

“Good night,” Ivory says into the sudden peppermint chill of darkness.

“Night, Ivory.”

Raphael shifts around on his bed for a while, like a cat trying to find a comfortable position, sighing and clearing his throat a few times. Then he's quiet, and Ivory becomes aware of the sound of his own breathing, which sounds harsh and laboured in the gentle silence, but he can't seem to make it any less intrusive without getting short of breath.

“Ivory?” Raphael whispers.

“Yes?”

“Isn't it uncomfortable, lying on the mattress?”

“No, it's fine,” Ivory whispers, pulling the blanket up to his chin. “I've slept on far worse.”

Raphael makes a displeased noise, probably at the mention of the holding cell, which provides neither a bed nor a mattress nor anything else to sleep on or in for Ivory or the wolf. He moves around again, and then his face peers over the edge of the bed, smudged in charcoal darkness.

“I just mean, if it's uncomfortable, you can sleep in my bed. It's big enough for two.”

“It's not uncomfortable, but thanks,” Ivory says haltingly. He'd like to sleep in Raphael's bed, probably, but he doesn't want to insult his hospitality, and the mattress really is fine.

“Well, you can come up here any time, if you change your mind,” Raphael whispers back. “Even in the night. Okay?”

“Okay,” Ivory says, and then they go to sleep.

*

The next day starts slow, all syrupy fireplace warmth and trickle of rain, an old ache in Ivory's bones like a wolf howling at the moon or a fresh bruise spreading out under your skin. He's awake before Raphael is, but stays in bed, tucked in deep, tasting the silence on his tongue.

Byron comes up around half past eight to crawl sleepily into Raphael's bed and elbow him over to the edge of the mattress for more space. Raphael protests feebly, and one of his hands trails down onto Ivory's pillow, early morning pulse twittering busily at his wrist. Ivory counts his fingertips onto Raphael's knuckles and snakes a kiss into the webbed hollow between his thumb and index finger, and Raphael's hand twitches under his lips.

Raphael's dad makes them crumpets for breakfast, and then takes Byron into town with him when he leaves for work, because Byron wants to meet his friends. Raphael's mum leaves soon after that too, and Raphael and Ivory spend a little while exploring the overgrown garden that sprawls out behind the house, armed with wellington boots, scarves and sandwiches and enjoying the lemon-fresh burst of sunlight that tears through the cloud cover shortly before lunchtime.

After they've stumbled back inside, windswept and damp and laughing about a pair of frogs they found by the pond, Raphael makes them tea that tastes like the first wet tendrils of spring, and Ivory wants to ask him where they buy it, because it must be the same brand as the one Hogwarts uses, but he forgets when they end up in a hammock in the living room, kissing tenderly as it creaks and sways.

Raphael's thumb draws runes onto the sensitive skin on the inside of Ivory's wrist. His fingers curl and flex, then knot themselves in the sleeve of Ivory's shirt, like a question mark twisted out of shape.

“Ivory,” Raphael mumbles, sucking nervously on his bottom lip. “Can I... will you show me your scars?”

Ivory frowns a little, because he doesn't know how to feel about that. Raphael's house isn't a Ministry examination room, but his scars aren't pretty, and he doesn't want to scare him off. In the end, he settles for sliding his right sleeve up to his elbow and holding out his arm for Raphael to inspect. It looks worse than the rest of him, a starry expanse of bite marks, scratches, fresh scabs and the last remnants of discoloured flesh from his most recent silver injections, a new immunisation procedure that makes his life at Hogwarts a whole lot easier without the threat of allergic reactions hanging over every silver spoon and ladle. He figures if Raphael can stand the sight of it, he'll be okay with the rest.

Raphael, thankfully, doesn't gasp or wince or recoil. Instead he runs his finger over the longest, most ridged scar and sighs.

“They don't all fade, do they?” he asks sadly.

“The minor ones do, especially the ones from tears and scratches,” Ivory explains. “It's the saliva that does the most damage, actually. And the marks from the injections and the blood tests will be gone soon. It doesn't always look quite so ugly.”

He shrugs, and rolls his sleeve back down. Raphael is staring at him, eyes silky-wide and lips twisted to the side.

“It's not ugly,” he says, “you're not ugly.”

Ivory can't help feeling mollified, and he huddles down further into the warmth of the hammock and Raphael's body, pulling his shoulders up.

“Do you want to see the rest,” he whispers, heart going wild inside his chest.

Raphael makes a noise and buries his nose in the side of his neck.

“Yes, please,” he says, and Ivory smiles.

* 

They go back upstairs, Ivory's hand coiled in Raphael's, and Ivory takes off his shirt. Then they sit on the bed, and Raphael touches him carefully, sliding his hands over his chest and back, chasing bones with his fingertips and grazing puckered white scar tissue with his knuckles, and finally, shyly, circling one nipple with his thumbnail and snatching his hand back when Ivory draws in a sharp breath.

“Sorry,” he mutters, holding his hand close to his chest.

“No,” Ivory says a little desperately. He doesn't know how to say that he liked it, so he takes Raphael's hand back and puts it on his ribs where it rested before. Slowly, Raphael runs his thumb over his nipple again, sending a streak of excitement into the nowhere land of Ivory's sensory cortex, which is so much more used to dealing with discomfort and pain. When he gasps, Raphael kisses him, stroking his tongue into Ivory's mouth and keeping his fingers on his chest, pebble-small weights nestled calmly against his skin.

“Can you take your shirt off too,” Ivory asks once they draw apart. Raphael looks a little sheepish, but pulls his jumper over his head anyway, revealing darker, unmarred skin, a sweet trickle of hair, and hipbones that Ivory wants to press his whole face to and fall asleep against.

Raphael shifts nervously and slots his wrists together in front of his stomach as if to hide its soft swell. Ivory doesn't know how to tell him that he's perfect, so he leans forward and presses his lips to both of Raphael's nipples in turn, then against his sternum, and just above his navel, feeling a shiver of delight at the breathy noises Raphael makes, so he pushes until Raphael is lying on the bed and his arms fall away, and spends a little while kissing and licking and nibbling tentatively while Raphael's hands make trembly shapes in the air at his sides and his heart thumps hard under Ivory's lips.

“Ivory, I... I'm... you should probably stop,” Raphael stammers at last, half-apologetic, quickly drawing up his legs as Ivory rearranges himself beside him on the bed. He's wearing loose, soft linen trousers that fail to hide the heavy shape of his erection, and Ivory takes a moment to feel pleased with himself about that, because he's shirtless on a bed with a boy who knows what he is and he still managed to do that.

“I want to touch you,” he hears himself saying, fingers trailing over the waistband of Raphael's trousers. “Can I touch you?”

Raphael draws in a rocky, splintering breath, head falling to the side to glance at him, a whole Ferris wheel of wonder in his gaze. He nods.

“You really want to?” he says, achy and needy, and Ivory slips his hand inside his trousers in reply and draws another sharp-edged sea salt gasp out of him as he wraps his hand around his warm, hard cock. The angle isn't right, though, so he sits up again and pulls Raphael's trousers down to his knees, then sits on his legs because this way it's almost like jerking himself off, and he can feel the muscles of his thighs clench and shudder under him in response.

“I... wait,” Raphael whimpers, scrabbling at his wrist. “I want to...”

Ivory lets go of him and sits very still as Raphael pushes himself up awkwardly.

“Can you lie down?”

Curious, Ivory shuffles over and lies on his back. He's only a bit hard, from when Raphael was touching his chest earlier, and Raphael flicks his gaze upward silently asking for permission with his fingers on the fly of Ivory's corduroys before fidgeting them open and pulling them down off his legs along with his underwear. Carefully, he folds them and puts them on a chair, then he struggles out of his own trousers and pants and kneels at Ivory's waist.

“Not ugly,” Raphael murmurs, sounding almost resigned as he strokes his fingers up the length of Ivory's thigh. “Sometimes you're a bit of an idiot, you know.”

He shimmies a little further down the bed and pops his knees between Ivory's legs, again looking up for permission with his hands braced on either side of Ivory's hips and his mouth pressing a wet, open kiss onto the skin below his navel. Ivory has a moment of confusion, until Raphael's mouth wanders further down, following the line of his hipbone and trailing words into his pitiful excuse for pubic hair, and Ivory has to close his eyes against the sudden upwash of sensory information and the noisy market-stall bustle of emotions vying for attention inside his brain, because what Raphael wants, apparently, is to suck him off.

“Okay?” Raphael asks quietly, just holding him for now, with his face between his legs as if that's a good place to be, his smooth cheek rubbing up against the altogether different pattern of scars on the insides of Ivory's thigh. He hasn't added one in a long time, after Maxwell and Sebastian found out and sat him down for a long talk, but he's still got the list of _okay alternatives to cutting_ taped up on the inside of his wardrobe door that they made for him, in case he ever feels like doing it again.

“Okay,” he says, and doesn't miss the shaky inhale before Raphael takes him into his mouth.

It feels – good, very good, especially when Raphael uses his hand as well and sucks hard on the tip of his cock, but not enough to come just yet, so he tugs him back up in the end and Raphael jerks them both off, their sticky foreheads bumped together and their lips sliding messily against each other as they finish almost in tandem. Raphael makes the prettiest noise when he comes, a high whine in the back of his throat that makes the wolf stir with interest somewhere in the base of Ivory's skull. After, Raphael pulls him close in a shaky hug, and Ivory strokes his side until he stops trembling, too exhausted for the nifty wandless cleaning charm he used last time, apparently.

“We should shower,” Ivory mumbles sleepily. The wolf wants much rather to curl up and lick the salt off Raphael's skin, and to bite him just a little, to mark him as his own. It's a good thing his saliva isn't infectious in human form.

“Five minutes,” Raphael sighs, cuddling closer. “I like being naked with you.”

“I like it too,” Ivory admits, embarrassed when he notices that he's chewing on the first knuckle of his index finger, but his teeth itch, and it's a soothing habit, allowed as long as he doesn't break skin.

“You're... surprisingly bitey,” Raphael says, voice shaking with silent laughter.

“Mm,” Ivory makes, shoving his hand under the pillow to make himself stop.

“It's alright,” Raphael says and nudges him. “I like it.”

“Mm,” Ivory growls again, and starts biting gently along the heel of Raphael's hand instead, just enough to calm his teeth, like a kitten treading fur, and Raphael chuckles and hums and lets him have the rest of his hand without complaint.

*

They stay a whole week at Raphael's house, idle days spent holding hands on long walks through the countryside, curled up on Raphael's bed with books and homework and endless cups of tea or kissing over hot chocolate in the steamed-up warmth of Raphael's favourite cosy bookshop-slash-café in town. They go to a Muggle cinema with Byron, something Ivory has never done before, and on one memorable evening, Ivory teaches Raphael's dad how to play _Für Elise_ on the piano. After that first night, they mostly use Ivory's mattress for afternoon cuddles, and Ivory sleeps in Raphael's bed at night, sometimes exploring each other's bodies, but most times just lying tangled up in each other, sharing murmured secrets in the small, treasured space between their mouths.

Ivory has to go home for the full moon, though, and when Raphael asks him, cocooned in darkness and the warmth of blankets, if he can come with him the night before he leaves, Ivory says okay.

Sebastian comes via Floo to pick them up, shaking hands with Raphael's parents and chatting pleasantly with Mrs Marlowe about pottery and cheese soufflés while Raphael runs back upstairs because he's forgotten something. Ivory makes sure to thank his parents for letting him stay, waves goodbye to Byron, who's in the conservatory with a girl that might or might not be his girlfriend, and spends a few minutes petting all of the Marlowe's cats, which flock around him in distress at the sight of his suitcase by the Floo.

“I see you've made some friends,” Sebastian remarks, amused.

“Maybe we should get a cat,” Ivory says absent-mindedly. He's long since figured that if the cats aren't afraid of him, it's probably safe to let them stick around – they have better instincts than him in human form, after all.

“I think the ginger one is pregnant,” Mrs Marlowe says. “She's half-Kneazle, though, so you might not want one of hers – they're a bit more independent if they've got Kneazle blood.”

“Seb,” Ivory says, immediately wanting one with all his heart.

Sebastian laughs and picks up his suitcase as Raphael comes clattering back down the stairs with about five more books than he had before.

“Owl us when they're old enough for a new home, perhaps?” Sebastian tells Mrs Marlowe, who's picked up the ginger cat and is gently feeling her stomach. The creature looks grumpy, but when Ivory rubs his knuckles along her jaw, she purrs.

“I will,” Mrs Marlowe promises.

They say their goodbyes, Raphael hugging his parents and all of the cats that don't manage to scatter fast enough and planting a noisy kiss on Byron's cheek, much to the latter's chagrin. Then they're off, tumbling out of the Floo somewhat less gracefully than Sebastian, trailing soot and cat hair and the Marlowe house smell of curry powder and tea leaves.

“By the way,” Ivory says, struggling only a little as Maxwell swoops in on him from the kitchen and wraps him up in a hug, “where do you buy your tea?”

“Hm?” Raphael says, attention once again on the bookshelves. “Oh, nowhere special. It's a Muggle brand, I think, just regular tea. Why?”

“It tastes different,” Ivory frowns.

He doesn't think much about it after that, because Maxwell shows him the room they've prepared for the wolf this time, and there's an actual tree growing from the floor to the ceiling, an ancient-looking, gnarled oak with peeling bark and low-hanging branches that are perfect for climbing and lying on. They'll cast their Patronuses just before Ivory transforms, as they usually do; Maxwell's giant friendly moose and Sebastian's Arctic fox, to keep him company for the better part of the night, until they fade with the morning light.

“That's really amazing magic,” Raphael tells Ivory later, under his breath. “Your brothers are really talented.”

Ivory smiles. He's making tea with Raphael perching on the bench and practising wandless levitation on a bent old copper spoon, his tongue peeking out between his lips in concentration. There's a spot he missed while shaving earlier, and the spoon drops with a clatter when Ivory kisses him there.

“You're distracting,” Raphael grumbles, cheeks heating up.

Ivory folds one leg underneath him as he sits, humming tunelessly. He takes a sip of his tea, and when their normally bland Ceylon suddenly blooms into minty liquorice life on his tongue, he lowers his mug and clears his throat.

“It's you,” he says, full of wonder. “You make the tea taste different.”

“What?”

Raphael sounds alarmed. The spoon rattles nervously against the table, and when Ivory takes another sip of his tea, the taste has faded to a subtle background note again.

“Never mind,” Ivory says, smiling. “Try levitating a cushion next. Maybe you can hit Maxwell's head, the lazy git's fallen asleep in his armchair again.”

*

“You don't have to do this.”

“I want to,” Raphael protests, clutching at the stuffed rabbit that's been going into the room with Ivory ever since the wolf took an unexpected liking to it a few years ago. It used to be white once, but its fur is matted and grey now, faded with time, wolf spit and cleaning charms. One of its long ears flops dejectedly over its eye.

“It's fine if you're scared...”

“I'm not scared,” Raphael says firmly. He hands the rabbit over to Ivory and draws up his shoulders, not quite hiding the tremor in his hands. “Why should I be scared? You've been taking your Wolfsbane, your brothers are here, you've eaten, you're tired and Maxwell says you'll probably sleep through most of the night anyway...”

“They can lock me in, if that's what you're worried about,” Ivory says, frowning.

“No!”

In a tiny, explosive flurry of movements, Raphael has slid off the bed and onto the floor to kneel in front of Ivory and take his hands.

“You don't deserve to be locked in. I'm okay, seriously, it's no big deal. I'll be busy being trashed at Wizard's chess by Sebastian, anyway.”

Ivory doesn't mention that this _is_ a big deal, for him; Raphael staying at the house while he transforms. Not even his mother is comfortable doing that, and his father packed his bags more or less on the morning after the first full moon. He knots his fingers in his lap and lets Raphael hug him again, then takes the rabbit by one of its ears and leads the way downstairs to his tree-room. Sebastian's fox sits on a lower branch already, tail twitching back and forth.

“I could try casting mine?” Raphael suggests shyly. “If that helps, I mean. It probably won't last very long, though.”

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

Ivory nods, and Raphael takes his hand and fumbles his wand out of his pocket.

“ _Expecto Patronum_!”

It's only the second time Ivory gets to see it, and he's reminded of a little fact that he may have forgotten to mention to Raphael.

“I, um,” he says as the luminous white wolf begins to circle Maxwell's moose with interest. “Listen, if my brothers offer to take you upstairs to see me later...”

Raphael's eyes widen.

“I can do that? I mean... that's possible?”

“I don't actually know. They say the wolf is – mostly sleepy, these days, because of the Wolfsbane, and it knows their scent, so... but I don't know what would happen with someone else there. There'd be Shield charms and everything, of course,” Ivory babbles, and now he's the nervous one while Raphael smiles and squeezes his hand reassuringly. “Just, um, if they do... Well, you'll see. I have to go now.”

“Oh, right,” Raphael says, nodding. “I'll go downstairs, then. See you, um, see you on the other side, I guess.”

Ivory watches him until he closes the door to the living room behind him. It's almost time. He takes a deep breath and walks into his room, where he peels off his clothes, folds them on a shelf, and sits down cross-legged with his back to the rough tree bark of the oak. Sebastian's fox continues to sit on its branch, its tail flicking ghost-like over Ivory's shoulder from time to time, and then Raphael's wolf lies down soundlessly at his feet.

Reassured, Ivory closes his eyes and counts down the minutes.

*

“Hello, cub.”

He blinks his eyes open through the early morning haze of aching bones and birdsong. Maxwell is kneeling over him with a blanket, and Ivory yelps a little when he wraps it around him and slides his arms under him to pick him up.

“Sorry,” he hums, cradling him close. “It's just residual pain from the transformation, no injuries this time, I've already checked. You'll be okay in a few hours. Let's get you to bed, alright?”

Ivory nods weakly and lets himself be carried out of the room and up the stairs. The house is quiet, filled with a rumpled, reddish glow. Dew drips from the windowsills. It must be early.

“You were very well-behaved last night,” Maxwell tells him, smiling. “Didn't even growl at your boy when we came to check in. He was quite taken with you, by the way.”

Ivory whines a little, trying to break through the scratchy feeling at the back of his throat. Maxwell quietly opens the door to his room with his elbow and carries him inside. Someone says “oh,” and then there's some shuffling, and Maxwell puts him down on the bed next to Raphael, who holds the blanket up for him with bleary eyes and pillow creases on his cheek.

“Sleep,” Maxwell instructs, stroking his hair. “Sebastian's up and in his office, he'll make you breakfast later.”

“Thanks,” Ivory says, and it sounds like a plaster being ripped off skin. Maxwell chuckles quietly and leaves, and then Raphael's breathing “hi” and helps him sit up to drink some water from the glass on the bedside table.

“How are you feeling?”

“Achy,” he says truthfully, “but okay.”

He slides down under the covers again, and Raphael carefully puts an arm around him. He's very warm, even through the layer of Ivory's second blanket, and Ivory shifts a little closer so he can push his nose into Raphael's neck.

“I like that my Patronus looks like you,” Raphael whispers, just before he falls asleep. “I already thought it was beautiful even before I knew, but now that I do, I like it even more.”

Ivory makes a noise that sounds a bit like a sigh and bit like _I love you_ , and then he drifts off.

*

At King's Cross, Raphael disappears for a moment to say hello to his parents, who are dropping Byron off, and Ivory waits by their suitcases, idly watching Sebastian make small-talk with the conductor and sucking on a liquorice wand. Luvander drifts past, and, when Ivory gives him a little wave, he comes over, looking wary.

“Hello, handsome,” he says, though without the usual flirty fervour. “Had nice holidays?”

“Very,” Ivory replies, offering his bag of sweets. Luvander squints at him for a moment, then takes a sugar quill and bites off a dainty little piece.

“Thank you. So, where's your, um... friend?” Luvander asks, still squinting, and Ivory wonders if maybe he needs a pair of glasses. Someone calls Luvander's name from further down the platform, but Luvander ignores them in favour of watching Ivory calmly stow away his sweets and straighten out his Ravenclaw jumper.

“If you mean Raphael, he's talking to his family,” Ivory finally says and smiles. “And he's my boyfriend, actually.”

Luvander looks startled for all of two seconds, then throws his head back and laughs. Ivory can feel the corners of his own mouth twitch up into a grin.

“Well, good for you,” Luvander says.

“Yes, good for me,” Ivory agrees.

They shake hands, and Luvander winks conspiratorially before disappearing into the crowd again to join his friends, just as Raphael appears back at Ivory's side, wheezing with excitement.

“Have you seen Cassie and Nat over by the barrier?” he pants, grabbing a hold of Ivory's arm and jumping up and down. “They just arrived – and, and they were _kissing_ \- “

“So?”

“- _kissing_ , Ivory, our girls, I can't believe -”

“Raphael,” Ivory says, barely suppressing a laugh. “They've been together all year, you do know that, right?”

Raphael deflates.

“What?” he says, crestfallen. “I – of course I knew, yeah, that's, um.”

Ivory shakes his head, amused, then leans forward to kiss the surprise off of his boyfriend's face.

“You're cute,” he says, and starts dragging his suitcase over to the doors of the train, ignoring Raphael's indignant squawk of protest behind him.

“Come on, Hogwarts is waiting!” he calls over his shoulder and laughs.


End file.
